Bridging Speech, Music, and Sound in Popular Singing

Theo van Leeuwen once called for an integrated study of speech, music, and sound, noting that each domain has been discussed in isolation: linguistics addresses speech, musicology deals with music, and sound effects are rarely examined at all. This poster aims to explore a meeting point between these three modes by analyzing the popular singing voice.

Popular singing frequently draws from everyday speech. Research shows that country singers, for instance, build their vocal style on natural speech patterns rather than classical technique. Lyrics function not only as verbal messages but also as structures of sound that convey emotion and reveal character. These speech elements become stylized through the singer’s artistry.

We view popular singing as an aesthetic naturalism — a stylized expression of emotion that uses ordinary speech patterns as raw material. In this framework, paralinguistics offers a useful tool. The paralinguistic dimension often carries as much weight as literal word meanings, especially given the “naturalistic” tendency in popular music.

Many paralinguistic effects in singing — melodic drops, vibrato, creaky voice — originated in speech and remain responsible for conveying emotion. By examining the interaction between lyrics, singing, and paralanguage, we can begin to map the expressive potential of the popular singing voice.

Materials and Method

This study focuses on four paralinguistic qualifiers identified by Fernando Poyatos: breathy voice, raucous voice, falsetto voice, and cry breaks. These effects alter vocal timbre and act as modifiers of verbal utterances. According to Poyatos, these components are influenced by psychological and emotional variables, and their communicational significance lies in sociocultural functions. They produce voice effects perceived socially and judged by established values, whether universally or culturally.

We analyze the second verse of Emmylou Harris’ “Where Will I Be.” Harris uses a wide range of paralinguistic features in her singing, and many affect rhythmic and melodic parameters already well-studied. This analysis concentrates on timbre-related effects. After a brief song description, we examine the potential expressive power of these qualifiers in a twenty-second excerpt, using a spectrogram to visualize them.

Analysis

Song Context

“Where Will I Be” appears on Emmylou Harris’ twentieth album, Wrecking Ball (1995), regarded as a genre masterpiece. The album is the only one in Harris’ discography produced by Daniel Lanois, famous for his work with Peter Gabriel, U2, and Bob Dylan. Lanois also wrote the song. The lyrics contemplate mortality and urgent desires, organized into verses depicting specific scenes. The excerpt analyzed comes from the second verse, which narrates a sensual encounter with “an Indian boy in Ottawa.” This verse features delicate vocal nuances that suggest a spectrum of emotions experienced by the character.

Four Paralinguistic Qualifiers

The annotated spectrogram shows ellipses marking instances of the four effects, color-coded: pink for raucous voice, white for breathy voice, yellow for cry breaks, green for falsetto voice. There are two raucous instances, four breathy, two cry breaks, and one falsetto. One ellipse shows a combination of breathy and falsetto on the word “heart.” Many other effects appear — drops, smears, vibratos — but this analysis focuses on the four qualifiers.

Raucous Voice

The term “raucous” can be misleading, as it implies defect when none exists. The spectrogram shows doubled partials, indicating additional vibrations. This resembles controlled vibration of both vocal folds and ventricular folds. The effect sounds fluid rather than husky or tense. Professional singers in jazz, blues, and pop frequently use this harmless technique involving vibration of the false bands. Emmylou Harris reserves this effect for specific contexts: references to the “Indian boy” and more intense action lines like “He laid me down.” Rather than suggesting aggression, the subtle raucousness conveys strength or power linked to the character, supporting a positive attitude toward the event.

Breathy Voice

Where raucous voice marks intensity, breathy voice conveys delicacy and inner emotion. The clearest instances occur on elongated vowels in “Ottawa,” “straw,” “breath,” and “heart,” each lasting roughly three beats. The spectrogram reveals little harmonic content in these spots, replaced by varying degrees of breathing sound. In everyday speech, breathy voice may connote emotions from sexual arousal to weariness, anxiety, shock, confusion, or dismissal. Harris applies it at specific moments. On “breath,” the effect both illustrates the word’s meaning and evokes anxiety felt by the female character. For “Ottawa” and “straw,” sensuality dominates, creating a contrast with raucous voices earlier in their lines. The alternation between raucous and breathy voice forms an emotional pattern moving from intensité to delicacy. The combined breathy-falsetto on “heart” leads to the next set of effects.

Falsetto Voice and Cry Breaks

Falsetto, familiar as “full head voice,” refers to the treble range achieved by a technique where vocal cords vibrate in shorter length — the second mode of phonation. While associated with male singers, female artists such as Harris use it extensively. Throughout the song, Harris uses head voice, especially in choruses. In the verse studied, one clear falsetto instance appears on “heart,” combined with breathiness to produce what Poyatos calls “whispery falsetto.” In normal speech, this effect is sometimes observed in women and children when they cry. The word “heart” represents an emotionally intense moment, with paralinguistic qualifiers transmitting complex feelings that simple words cannot capture.

Cry breaks, considered “icons of crying” in stylized singing and speech, consist of sudden shifts between phonation modes—essentially a yodel effect. Two instances appear: one subtle shift on “in Ottawa” and another more pronounced on “your heels.” The first is barely audible, adding to the singer’s expressive palette. The second break is clear and strong, suggesting both physical pain of blistered heels and metaphorical sadness. This alternation between chest voice and head voice — including falsetto breaks — marks a stylistic feature found in what some scholars call “victim-songs.” Switching between controlled chest voice and vulnerable head voice effectively underlines the thematic tensions at play. In country-oriented songs, such effects help illustrate nuanced emotional states beyond simple verbal description.

Conclusion

This poster attempted to show how applying paralinguistics to popular music studies can help integrate discourses around music, speech, and sound. Considerably more work remains — including formal reception tests to support subjective interpretations. Nevertheless, we hope the potential of drawing across disciplines has become evident and encourages further research.